Joy and Sadness Suffuse Ayo’s African Soul

After a downtown Manhattan performance this week, the German-Nigerian singer Ayo was approached by a fan who commented on her soulful reggae-pop song, “Down on My Knees,” about the grief of a breakup.

“We play it cool, but that’s how we feel inside” the fan said.

“Yes, that is exactly what I meant,” Ayo said, looking deeply into her eyes before tightly embracing her for what seemed an eternity, as others gathered to greet the singer.

Ayo, who is a star in Europe, is little known in the U.S. But as her main label, Universal Motown Records and her American representative, MBM Records, try to change that–through shows like the one Wednesday at the Highline Ballroom to promote her third record and an American tour planned for the fall–they are counting on that intimate connection with her audience.

Ayo’s music, which has been compared to Tracy Chapman, Joan Armatrading, and Lauryn Hill, draws from a deep well of both sadness and joy and optimism from her tumultuous upbringing. In the mournful “Black Spoon,” she describes the flame-blackened kitchen spoons her heroin-addicted mother used to prepare hits.

Ayo said her gypsy mother, who was in and out of her life, was valued by diplomats in Nigerian embassies in Europe and Africa for her fortune-card reading skills. “She was always very on point, even when I didn’t want her to be,” Ayo, 31 years old, said in an interview at the Marble Lane hotel. “When you’re really in love you don’t want to hear that this isn’t the person you’ll be with.”

German-born Ayo herself lived a gypsy life, in foster homes or with her Nigerian engineer father after her parents’ divorce. She swapped her hometown of Cologne for Hamburg to begin recording and a decade ago left Germany altogether for London, then Paris, then New York in 2007, where she lived first in Greenwich Village and then Bedford-Stuyvesant. “What I love about New York is the people,” she said. In Paris, by contrast, she loves “the spirits. There’s something there we can’t explain.”

She now lives in Paris again, where “Joyful,” her first album, in 2006, achieved double platinum status in France. ”I feel like France adopted me,” said Ayo, whose full name is Joy Olasumibo Ogunmakin.

Ayo’s latest album, Billie-Eve–released in the U.S. Tuesday–is named after her 20-month-old daughter, who herself is named after Billie Holiday, an Ayo influence, and Eve, the first biblical woman. Ayo also likes that it’s pronounced like “Believe.”

Ayo, who is a self-taught guitarist, pianist and singer, now has 22 songs written for her next album, which she plans to record this year. She draws inspiration from artists ranging from rappers Mos Def and Nas to Nina Simon, Bob Marley, Joni Mitchell and Donny Hathaway, her favorite singer. In recording, she also likes to let fate have its say.

“If I make a mistake I like to just leave it,” she said. “You can’t photoshop a song. It’s like killing the spirit.”

As she closed her invitation-only performance at at the Soho House downtown on Monday night, Ayo compared her most famous song, “Down on My Knees,” to another famed singer. “I know you’ll be disappointed if I don’t sing that,” Ayo quipped. ” It’s like Gloria Gaynor not singing ‘I Will Survive.’”